


i'm already home

by hockeydyke



Series: Samwell Women's Hockey [7]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: F/F, Growing Up, National Women's Hockey League, Romance, Team as Family, Thanksgiving, Trust me guys this is sappy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 22:27:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13222506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeydyke/pseuds/hockeydyke
Summary: It's been a few years since she graduated from Samwell, and Celeste would say she's pretty happy, other than for the fact that her girlfriend has disappeared right before they have to host Thanksgiving for all of their best friends.The final work of my December 2017 holiday prompt fills!





	i'm already home

**Author's Note:**

> As is the case with all of these oneshots, this won't make sense without first reading my full-length Samwell Women's Hockey fic, Put That Weight on Me, which is the first story in this series. Check it out!

It’s been five years since she graduated from Samwell, but Courtney is still Celeste’s first phone call in times of crisis. Sure, Jordan is her other half and all that sappy bullshit, but Courtney actually knows how to be an adult, and Celeste needs a voice of reason right now. 

 

“Please come over,” Celeste says as soon as Courtney picks up. 

 

Courtney snickers. “How are you, Courtney?” she says in a voice that’s only a little mocking. “How’s work? Did you get that promotion? Oh, you did? Congratulations!” 

 

“Congratulations,” says Celeste, automatically. “Please come now.”

 

“You said you didn’t want anyone over until four.”

 

“That was before Jordan disappeared. She was supposed to take care of the turkey. I don’t know how to make a turkey. Please.” 

 

“Sorry, rewind for a second-- Jordan disappeared?” 

 

“It’s fine,” Celeste says, huffing. The reassurance is mostly for her own benefit. Jordan has been very secretive over the past few weeks, but Celeste has no idea how to bring it up with her. They’re both busy, anyway-- Pride has a real chance of back-to-back cup wins, and now that she’s an alternate, Celeste is determined to make it happen, and on top of that they both work other jobs. “She left a note. She’ll be back by dinnertime”

 

Courtney is silent for a second, and even though Celeste can’t see her, she has a feeling she knows what face she’s making. “And when has Jordan  _ ever  _ been on time for anything?” 

 

“She’s never been late to a game and she’s hardly ever been late to practices,” Celeste says, although she knows it’s a weak defense.

 

Courtney is quick to call her out on it. “Yeah, she’s never late because she has fucking  _ Hilary Knight  _ and  _ Brianna Decker  _ to answer to if she is.”

 

“And me,” Celeste echoes. 

 

“Exactly.” She doesn’t say anything else for a second, but Celeste can hear footsteps and sound of a door opening and the crack of the seal as it shut again. Then: “I can be there in twenty minutes and we’ll figure out the turkey. That good, Cap?” 

 

It’s funny that Courtney still calls her that, Celeste thinks. She hasn’t been Courtney’s team captain for years now, and anyway, Courtney was captain herself during her senior year. Maybe old habits just die hard, she figures.

 

“Absolutely. Thank you so much. You’re a lifesaver,” she says.

 

“Damn fucking straight I am. See you soon.”

 

“Alright. Bye,” Celeste says, even though Courtney has already hung up.

 

Truly, Courtney always has her back. Celeste sets down her phone and breathes a deep sigh of relief. That’s the turkey taken care of, at least. This year’s Friendsgiving dinner is a potluck, thankfully, so she doesn’t have to worry about the rest of the food. Other than the turkey, she and Jordan are only responsible for one of the dessert options, and they have one of Jack’s boyfriend’s pies tucked away in the fridge for that. 

 

So that just leaves the small matter of tracking down her girlfriend. 

 

Celeste is usually the first one to wake up in the morning-- in fact, she usually gets in a quick morning workout at the gym down the street from their apartment and is back home and showering by the time that Jordan wakes up. 

 

Not this morning, though. Celeste was woken up not by her alarm but rather by Jordan’s phone buzzing off of the nightstand and landing on the floor. Jordan swore as she woke up and lunged off the side of the bed, landing with a loud thud on the floor, to grab her phone. Celeste took the moment as an opportunity to wrestle back the sheets that Jordan had stolen during the night and then drifted back to sleep.

 

By the time Celeste’s alarm had gone off, Jordan’s side of the bed was cold. She checked the apartment and found it empty other than the cat yowling for breakfast and an empty coffee mug on the kitchen table.

 

Thankfully, Jordan had at least thought to text her:

 

_ Jordan (7:49): Gotta run an errand. I’ll be back before dinner. _

 

Celeste is doing her best to understand that this is probably important, but she’s also pissed. Hosting Thanksgiving is hard enough when they have a lot of friends and live in a fairly small apartment, so having her partner disappear on her last minute is probably the worst thing that can happen today. She ran a very angry few miles on the treadmill and tried to relax with a long shower, but now she can’t put off the turkey any longer. She eyes it where it’s been sitting thawing on the counter and sits back down at the table with her phone.

 

_ You (12:53): Courtney is coming over to help with the turkey, so don’t worry about that.  _

 

There. Sending that makes Celeste feel just the tiniest bit better, especially because Jordan knows that she’s a passive aggressive texter and won’t actually feel bad about it.

 

Courtney arrives twenty minutes later, as promised. She comes bearing a bottle of wine and some paperwork that she needs to get done. Anyone but Celeste would make her put away her work for the holidays, but, well. Celeste is Celeste, so once they have the turkey in the oven she grabs her laptop to answer some work emails as well. 

 

Thankfully, Courtney is also the master of work hard, play hard, so she shuts Celeste’s laptop by three o’clock and pours them each a glass of the wine. And then another. And by the time that the other guests start to arrive, they’re both a little bit tipsy, but they do have a fairly edible-looking turkey almost ready to be carved and the furniture pushed around for optimal party space. 

 

Guests arrive and deposit dishes on the counter before joining Celeste and Courtney in the kitchen. First is Anisa, prompt as always at four o’clock exactly. She’s very enthusiastic about the wine and  quickly launches into a story about how  _ awful  _ some of her students are. It makes Celeste kind of thankful that Jordan has decided against teaching in a classroom setting and gone more along a coaching route, because Ani is a thousand times more patient than Jordan is and still swears like a sailor when talking about the shenanigans kids get into.

 

Soon they’re joined by Sierra, who’d taken on a morning shift at the cafe she’s working at to sustain herself while she’s getting her Ph.D, and Johanna, who lets out a scarily guttural screech when she sees Sierra. Johanna’s been off doing some sort of traveling for work-- really, none of them know what she does exactly, and at this point they’re afraid to ask-- and hasn’t been in town for months. 

 

Sierra and Johanna are still huggling and babbling in a mix of English and Swedish when Tyler appears at the front door and has to awkwardly squeeze around them to get into the apartment. He arrives with a stack of vinyls from his band’s debut album and Celeste accepts one graciously even though she’s not sure what to do with it. She and Jordan don’t have a record player, so it might just end up hanging on the living room wall next to the photos from Pyeongchang.

 

Lauren arrives shortly after that and ends up sat around the coffee table playing a card game with Sierra and Tyler. Celeste is immensely grateful that a few years after Tyler and Lauren broke up they have managed to form an amicable friendship, mainly because Celeste is aware that she doesn’t have the people skills to deal with preventing tensions between exes at a party, and Courtney is a little bit too far gone protecting the turkey from disaster to work any social magic right now. 

 

In fact, even as a few more Samwell alumni and newer teammates arrive (seriously, how many people did Jordan invite to this thing?) and the apartment gets crowded, people seem pretty content. Celeste has very little to do as host. Unfortunately, that means that she has all too much time to stare down the front door and get increasingly worried as the clock nears five. 

 

Jordan  _ said  _ she would be home in time for dinner. The dinner that all their friends had managed to set aside time for. The dinner that Jordan was meant to make the turkey for, although that was clearly already a lost cause.

 

“Celeste.  Can we please get this show on the road? There are too many hungry athletes here. They’re starting to look kind of homicidal,” Courtney says, and Celeste starts. She had been fairly deep in her thoughts while she glared at the door. 

 

“Oh, right. Yeah. We might as well.” Celeste stands and sets down her empty wine glass. She heads over to the kitchen and starts unwrapping dishes while Courtney marshals some of the guests into helping her pull the tables into the middle of the living room.

 

Within twenty minutes, every guest is sitting. Celeste considers asking if anyone wants to say grace, but that’s usually the sort of thing that Jordan would initiate, so she doesn’t bother. The entire table is just the tiniest bit tense, and no one reaches for the meal laid out in front of them yet. It’s possible that Celeste’s unease is contagious. Celeste hasn’t looked at the door in a while and she makes a point to sit in a chair with a back to it, but she almost feels like she can see it, still closed, from the back of her head. 

 

After a minute of awkward silence, Celeste can’t take it anymore.

 

“Jesus,” she says, shaking her head, and that in itself is almost a prayer. “Just eat.”

 

Hesitantly, hands reach out across the table to serve portions. 

 

There’s a knock at the door and Celeste stands so fast her chair tips over and crashes to the ground. The cat, before now happily curled up on the back of the couch, is shocked and goes skittering off into the bedroom. 

 

Celeste flies at the front door and swings it open so hard that it hits the wall of the entryway. Jordan has already dented the wall there from regularly being too aggressive with the door, so really, no new damage is done.

 

“You’re  _ late _ ,” Celeste says before the door is even completely open, because of course it’s Jordan. She’s in her Carhartt, scarf, and a knit toque because it’s freezing outside. Bits of snowflakes have nested in her clothes and even on her dark eyelashes. 

 

“I am so so so sorry,” Jordan says. She doesn’t step inside of the apartment-- just shifts from foot to foot, a little awkward, hands nested in her back pockets. “I got a job.”

 

“On Thanksgiving?” Celeste asks, raising a brow.

 

“Please, Celeste. You should know better than anyone that this is just the fake  _ American _ Thanksgiving,” Jordan teases. “My meeting was with a Canadian.”

 

“Of course it was. And what exactly was it about?” Celeste leans against the doorway, crossing her arms. Someone at the table calls out to ask who’s there, but she ignores them.

 

“Reffing.”

 

Oh. That makes sense. Jordan started reffing to supplement the scant salaries she got from coaching and had quickly found that she liked it much more than most of the other side jobs she’d tried. She’d started with local high school games and then done a few camps to sharpen her skills and moved on to NCAA and a few junior league games. As it turns out, her tough, take-no-shit attitude is pretty well-adapted to officiating games. 

 

“Reffing, right,” Celeste repeats. 

 

“Remember how I said there were some NHL scouts at that college tournament I reffed in October?”

 

“Yes,” Celeste says. Her eyebrow raises even higher, threatening to disappear into her hairline. “You didn’t get a job with-- did you?”

 

“Not yet,” says Jordan. “But this guy, he really wants me to get there eventually. I still need to meet with a couple more people, but I think I’ve got a contract with the AHL in the bag.”

 

Celeste cocks her head and looks at her for a second. This is her Jordan-- a little bit older than when they first met, and a little bit wiser, too, thank god. She’s got the beginning of laughter lines that show deep when she’s grinning particularly wide, like right now. She still has the dorky lopsided smile that does nothing to hide the gap where her missing tooth once was. 

 

Something occurs to Celeste. “I’m so proud of you, but-- the door was unlocked. Why did you knock?”

 

“Oh, right. I didn’t want to do this in the middle of the apartment with everyone staring.”

 

And then she’s getting down on one knee and it almost looks like she’s about to-- 

 

Oh, god. 

 

She is.

 

“I don’t have anything mushy to say,” Jordan says. She’s clearly miscalculated the order of things, because she has to straighten up somewhat to be able to reach her hand into the back pocket of her jeans. Once she’s fished out the ring box she drops back down to a kneel and holds the it out to Celeste. “I just want to marry you.”

 

They stare each other down for a few seconds, Jordan hopeful, Celeste-- processing.

 

“Stand up,” Celeste says.

 

Jordan stands. Her face has fallen from the easy grin to an unsure expression. She sets her jaw. “So is that a no?”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Celeste says, lifting onto her tiptoes to kiss Jordan firmly. “Of course it’s a yes.” 

 

Jordan lets out a whoop and before Celeste has time to process what’s happening she’s being lifted, bridal style, and Jordan is carrying her back into the apartment. 

 

“Sorry I kept my wife from her Thanksgiving dinner,” Jordan says, depositing Celeste into her chair. “We had some important business to attend to. 

 

‘Not your wife yet,” Celeste says, although she grabs hold of Jordan’s jacket and tugs her down so she can kiss her properly. She ignores the cheers and lewd comments made by their friends. It’s all background noise right now.

 

“I think a spring wedding would be nice,” Jordan whispers into Celeste’s ear once she’s pulled away to breathe. 

 

“With this crowd?” Celeste asks, nodding at their guests. “Let’s just elope.”

 

Jordan cackles at that, and well. If Celeste can’t resist kissing her again, then who can blame her? She’s in love. It happens. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Already Home by A Great Big World.
> 
> And that's a wrap for these oneshots! You know I had to do this-- both the reffing, and the proposal. Maybe it's just me, but I've got such a vision of Jordan on the ice of an NHL game tearing apart some dumbasses who think they can fight on her watch. She'd look so good in stripes! Just imagine it! If I could draw I would try to draw it but for now I'm going to have to deal with it just being in my head.
> 
> Of course, this probably isn't my last time writing SWH. I think most of you have caught on to the fact that Jordan centralizes for the 2018 Olympics, and I'm really hoping to write a little something about that and hopefully get it up around when the Olympics are actually happening. That's dependent on how my courseload turns out to be this semester, though, so we'll see how it goes!
> 
> I'd love to know what you think of this, so please leave a comment or visit me on tumblr where I'm @hockeydyke!


End file.
